Chapter 127

Early in the morning, the clattering sounds of unloading outside woke Yu Yi up. She glanced at the time—it was just past seven. The summer sun rose early, and its scorching red light had already seeped through the gaps in the curtains, casting a golden strip on the floor.

Since the noise outside made it impossible to go back to sleep, Yu Yi got out of bed and lifted the curtain to peek downstairs.

A moving truck was parked in front of the apartment building, and two workers were unloading appliances from the vehicle. Taking advantage of the still-cool morning, they hurriedly carried the items upstairs.

This residential compound was an old neighborhood without elevators, so everything had to be moved manually. Fortunately, the family moving in lived on the third floor, right across from Yu Yi’s apartment, which explained the loud commotion.

A few days ago, when Yu Yi had returned home for her vacation, her parents mentioned that Uncle Xue and Aunt Wei, who had been divorced for many years, had recently rekindled their old flame and remarried in a hurry. Aunt Wei was planning to move back from another city.

Over the past few days, moving trucks had come and gone three or four times, and today’s trip was likely the last one.

However, while there had been plenty of items being moved in, Yu Yi hadn’t seen anyone return yet.

Just as this thought crossed her mind, her phone chimed. She turned back into the room, picked up her phone from beside her pillow, and saw a WeChat message from Xue Mingyuan:

【My brother’s back.】

Above this message was their chat from the previous night. For once, they hadn’t been discussing homework but instead talking about his family. Yu Yi had asked, “I heard your parents got back together. Does that mean your brother will be coming back with your mom?”

Xue Mingyuan had replied, “Yes, once the transfer procedures are sorted out, Chenjing will come back with Mom.”

Sure enough, early that morning, as soon as Xue Chenjing returned home with his mother, Xue Mingyuan sent Yu Yi a message to let her know.

Yu Yi stepped out of her bedroom and saw that her front door was wide open. Across the hallway, the Xue family’s door was also open, with people bustling in and out. She overheard her parents’ laughter from inside.

“Xiao Yi? She’s still asleep. She’s on vacation, so let her sleep in. I’ll call her over once she’s up,” her mother said.

While Yu Yi was brushing her teeth and washing her face, she heard her mother add, “Oh, Chenjing, you’ve grown so much! You even look taller than your brother now.”

“You like playing basketball, huh? No wonder your arms are so strong. You were always more active than your brother when you were kids. I remember you dug up worms to scare Xiao Yi, and she ended up making you cry. I hope you’re not as much of a crybaby now!”

Yu Yi couldn’t help but feel exasperated at her mother’s knack for bringing up embarrassing old stories. When they were kids, Xue Chenjing had been quite the troublemaker, always provoking others. Unlike Xue Mingyuan, who was more tolerant, Yu Yi never let him get away with it and always put him in his place.

Back then, Xue Chenjing would often run to her parents, crying and swearing through snot and tears that he would never play with her again. But by the next day, he’d have forgotten all about his vow and would come running back to copy her homework.

Hearing her mother dredge up these cringe-worthy memories, Yu Yi hesitated at the doorway, almost retreating back inside.

Amid the laughter in the room, a muffled voice came from across the hallway: “I’m going downstairs to get something.”

A moment later, a figure slipped out of the Xue family’s apartment. Yu Yi, still standing in the doorway, found herself face-to-face with Xue Chenjing in the narrow hallway. Both of them froze, staring at each other in surprise.

Yu Yi leaned against the security door, her hair falling over her shoulders as she looked up at him. Her dark eyes reflected his figure.

The Xue brothers were twins, and their facial features were nearly identical. When they were kids, even their parents often struggled to tell them apart if they weren’t speaking.

Even after all these years apart, Xue Chenjing’s face was strikingly similar to Xue Mingyuan’s, whom Yu Yi saw every day. He had the same thick, dark eyebrows, long eyes with slightly upturned corners, and long lashes that added depth to his gaze.

However, at that moment, his face was tinged with a hint of embarrassment, his eyes filled with a look of “let’s not talk about the past.”

Xue Chenjing’s style was a stark contrast to Xue Mingyuan’s. While Xue Mingyuan usually wore his school uniform or simple white shirts, Xue Chenjing was dressed in a T-shirt with a bold graphic print, loose shorts, and sneakers. He even had a black earring in one ear.

He did seem taller and more muscular than Xue Mingyuan, with a slightly darker, sun-kissed complexion that suggested he spent a lot of time outdoors.

In the narrow hallway, Xue Chenjing felt like the blazing sunlight outside, radiating an overwhelming energy. His tall stature gave off an intimidating presence.

Yu Yi instinctively took a step back, but her gaze remained locked with his, unable to look away.

How long had it been since they last saw each other? Xue Chenjing had left with Aunt Wei when they were in fifth grade, and Yu Yi hadn’t seen him since. Now, after this summer, they would be starting their second year of high school. That meant it had been about six years.

Those six years stretched between them, making their reunion feel awkward and unfamiliar.

“Excuse me, young man,” a moving worker called out, breaking the silence in the hallway. Xue Chenjing had to step closer to Yu Yi to make room.

He tugged awkwardly at his shirt, then ran a hand through his hair. His eyes wandered to the cartoon stickers on the security door, and he absentmindedly scratched at one. Finally, his gaze settled back on her face. “Hey, long time no see,” he said.

Yu Yi glanced at his hand, noticing rings on his index and pinky fingers. Clearly, he’d picked up some trendy habits from the city. He was a far cry from the mud-covered troublemaker he’d been as a kid.

Xue Chenjing’s fidgeting and awkward demeanor only made Yu Yi feel more uncomfortable. She replied stiffly, “Long time no see.”

Then, silence fell between them.

Yu’s Mother, hearing the commotion in the hallway, called out from inside, “Xiao Yi, you’re up? Come over and say hello to Aunt Wei.”

“Coming,” Yu Yi replied. She stepped around Xue Chenjing and headed toward the Xue family’s apartment.

Behind her, Xue Chenjing gave himself a frustrated smack on the forehead before turning around and following her back inside.

The Xue family’s apartment was bustling. The newly moved-in items were still piled up in the living room, but that didn’t stop the two families from catching up. The conversation quickly turned to their childhood antics, with Xue Chenjing’s name coming up often due to his many embarrassing moments.

Yu Yi glanced around the room. Xue Mingyuan was smiling politely, refilling the adults’ teacups as they chatted animatedly. Xue Chenjing, on the other hand, sat alone in a corner, his face buried in one hand, looking utterly mortified.

The strands of hair falling over his forehead obscured his eyes, making Yu Yi wonder if he was on the verge of tears from all the childhood humiliation being dredged up.

Surprisingly, this trip down memory lane helped bridge some of the awkwardness between them. By the time the two families had dinner together that evening, Xue Chenjing had already warmed up enough to approach Yu Yi with his phone. “Hey, Yu Yi, add me on WeChat,” he said with a grin.

After his return, Xue Chenjing quickly reconnected with his old friends. He spent his days either playing basketball or skateboarding, often seen hanging out with his buddies under the summer sun. Yu Yi, sitting by the window doing her homework, would frequently catch sight of him laughing and joking with his friends.

However, as the summer break reached its midpoint, Xue Chenjing no longer had time to go out. Neither did his friends—they were all holed up at home, frantically trying to finish their homework.

Xue Chenjing stared in despair at the mountain of worksheets piled on his desk, clutching his head in frustration.

This stack of papers had been handed to him by Xue Xingzhi as soon as he’d returned home. His father had proudly declared, “You should thank your brother for this. Xue Mingyuan went to all your teachers and collected these for you.”

At that moment, Xue Chenjing seriously considered dragging his brother into the room and giving him a good thrashing.

He had procrastinated for so long, but now he had no choice but to get down to work. After the start of school, there would be a placement test, and it was said that most of the questions would be based on the summer homework assignments. If he ended up in a bad class, he was sure his parents, even in the midst of their honeymoon phase, would team up to give him a beating.

Xue Chenjing efficiently finished the Chinese and English papers, which he was good at, but was left scratching his head over a pile of math problems. He scribbled aimlessly on his draft paper, muttering through gritted teeth, “What kind of nonsense questions are these?!”

During dinner, Xue Mingyuan noticed his low spirits and offered, “Chenjing, if there are any problems you can’t solve, you can always ask me.”

Wei Tinglan chimed in, “That’s right. Your brother is really good at math and physics, unlike you, who’s so unbalanced in your subjects.”

Xue Chenjing rolled his eyes and retorted, “Pfft, these are just child’s play. Who can’t do them? I’m not an idiot.”

That night, however, after gnawing on his pen until midnight without finishing even one math paper, Xue Chenjing thought, “...What kind of impossible questions are these? Why are they so hard? Am I really an idiot?!”

Furious, he crumpled up the paper, breathing heavily, then flopped onto his bed, burying his face in the pillow.

A few minutes later, sniffling, he got up again, fished the crumpled paper out of the trash, smoothed it out on the desk, took a photo with his phone, and sent it via WeChat with the message: “Yu Yi, how do you solve this problem? *pitiful face emoji*”

At that hour, Yu Yi was already asleep and didn’t see his message until the next morning.

She opened the photo, surprised, and replied, “Isn’t this our summer homework? You have to do it too?”

In the room next door, Xue Chenjing was having a terrifying nightmare. In the dream, he was sitting in a bright, clean classroom, a crumpled test paper on his desk, taking an exam.

All around him, students were bent over their papers, scribbling furiously. The sound of pens scratching paper filled the air. But he just sat there, clutching his pen, staring at the questions, completely lost.

He couldn’t solve any of them—not the multiple-choice questions, not the fill-in-the-blanks, and definitely not the big problems with diagrams he couldn’t even understand, let alone figure out how to draw the auxiliary lines.

The clock above the blackboard ticked away mercilessly, time slipping through his fingers. The exam was almost over, and he hadn’t solved a single problem.

Xue Chenjing was sweating profusely, and just as the bell rang to signal the end of the exam, he couldn’t hold back his tears any longer and burst into sobs.

In the dimly lit room, Xue Chenjing lay on his side, clutching the blanket tightly, his body twitching as he whimpered in his sleep. His eyebrows were furrowed, his eyes darting restlessly beneath his eyelids, his damp eyelashes sticking to his lower lids.

The ding of a WeChat message pierced through his dream, morphing into the blaring of an alarm bell. He jolted awake, gasping for air.

It took him a while to fully come to his senses. He wiped the tears from his face with a shaky hand, fumbled for his phone, and opened Yu Yi’s message.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

The lingering sense of helplessness from the dream still clung to him. His limbs felt weak, and his fingers fumbled as he typed. Clearing his throat, he sent a voice message, his voice hoarse and weak: “Thanks to my brother, he picked up a copy of the summer homework for me when he got yours.”

The raspy voice traveled through the airwaves to Yu Yi’s phone.

Yu Yi rubbed her tingling ear, opened the photo again, and typed back, “You haven’t changed a bit. Still crying like a baby when you can’t solve a problem.”

Xue Chenjing’s face flushed red the moment he read the message. He cleared his throat forcefully and replied in a firm, clear voice, “I wasn’t crying!”

Yu Yi’s reply came quickly: “The words on the question above the one you took a photo of are smudged.”

Xue Chenjing opened the photo and saw that when he’d taken the picture of the problem he couldn’t solve, he’d accidentally included part of the question above it. The bold, messy handwriting of his solution was blurred by two unmistakable droplets of water.

It was too late to take it back now.

Xue Chenjing flopped back onto the bed, pounding the mattress in frustration. “Damn it.”

His phone dinged again. Yu Yi’s message popped up: “And you got the answer to that question wrong too.”

Xue Chenjing: “...” It was too early in the morning for this. He felt like crying again.

Qiu Qiu: Am I the only one in this family who’s a total academic failure? Waaaaah.